The Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs now seeks sources for the recompete of the AFRICAP program contract. The program encompasses logistics support, construction, military training and advising, maritime security capacity building, equipment procurement, operational deployment for peacekeeping troops, aerial surveillance and conference facilitation. Potential contractors must possess a broad range of functional regional expertise and logistics support capabilities. The intent is to have contractors on call to undertake a wide range of diverse projects, including setting up operational bases to support peacekeeping operations in hostile environments, military training and to providing a range of technical assistance and equipment for African militaries and peace support operations. These tasks will be implemented in countries throughout the African continent, as designated by the DOS, and in conjunction with specific DOS programs and policies.

The part in bold means military confrontations, fighting. The budget estimate is a billion dollars over 5 years. This is another example of the State Department becoming an arm of the Department of Defense. If DoS is subsumed under DoD, where can genuine diplomacy come from? This is very bad news for African countries. The big danger on the ground from AFRICOM is more likely to come from the military and security contractors, rather than US soldiers and sailors. Over at Moon of Alabama, Bernhard has a good writeup and followup discussion about the import of this.

I just came across a harvest of information, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Tracking the positive and negative impacts of over 4000 companies worldwide. If you put a search query in the search box on the left, for example ‘angola diamonds’, you can discover a lot of documentation. Many of the linked articles will be in MicroSoft Word. h/t to Sokari for the link.